Big Buck 411 Blog

A Different Kind of Crown

Deer hunters in St. Francisville have some of the whitest, best-tended choppers in all of Louisiana.

That’s because Dr. Frank Sullivan’s office has monstrous picture windows overlooking a wooded back lot, and whitetails come to a couple of feeders long before sunset.

Until last fall, one of the backyard bucks was a walking legend.

The dentist’s son nicknamed the deer Under Armour because its antlers resembled the logo, but lots of people had seen and were hunting the buck.

A bowhunter shot the animal in 2016, but it survived. In December of that year, the parish sheriff’s granddaughter rolled the deer with her car. After smashing her windshield, the buck landed in a ditch, but it wasn’t there when she got out and looked for it.

Three weeks later, the deer was behind Frank’s office again.

Two months before the 2017 season opened, Frank filmed the enormous buck with his phone. It was wearing about 80 more inches of antler than it had the previous season.

Understandably, Frank was smitten.

“I decided I wouldn’t go into the woods to check my trail camera cards after 3 p.m., so as not to leave any human odor in the afternoons,” he told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “I’d only put feed out and check my trail camera pictures before 3:00. Then, if Under Armour was patterning me, he’d think I wouldn’t be there later.”

In addition, he decided never to hunt from his stand two days in a row. And he wouldn’t get down until two hours after dark.

Frank climbed into his stand at 4 p.m. on Oct. 6. He saw several deer, including the buck of everyone’s dreams.

“Under Armour stepped out of a privet hedge 24 yards away,” he said. “About 75 percent of the velvet was hanging off his bloody antlers. It looked like he was wearing a mop.”

Frank tried to draw his bow when the deer was 17 yards away, but something spooked it back into the privet. If it hadn’t come back, it might still be alive.